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A Better Sort of Insult

I haven’t ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.

There are two kinds of insult. “I was bored by your book” is one kind. “Your book? Once I put it down, I couldn’t pick it up,” is the other.

Although both are insults, only one is witty. Or, at least, funny. I suppose we should reserve the accolade “wit” for the very highest practitioners of the art — Parker, Wilde, Shaw, Twain, Kaufman, Levant, Marx et al. Some would include Rickles. (As when Sinatra entered a club while Don was onstage. Rickles: “Make yourself comfortable, Frank, hit somebody.”)

While on the subject, I believe it was writer/critic Clive James who is said to have remarked, when a man punched Sinatra in the face one night outside the stage door, “That’s the first time the fan hit the . . . .”

If there is a Top Ten list of insults, Churchill’s most famous one would be at least number three. It is, of course, the well-known exchange between Sir Winston and an irate lady MP.
Often botched in the re-telling, the correct version, according to an MP who claimed to have witnessed the notorious exchange, was:

Mr. Churchill, you are drunk.

Madame, you are ugly.

Mr. Churchill, you are extremely drunk!

And you, Madame, are extremely ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.

Somewhere the witless got hold of it and added “..and you’ll still be ugly,” shamelessly spelling it out for the slow to catch on. The underlining of and the verbal stress on “I” needs no further help. The boobish add-on sinks it.

*****

Great humorists are great insulters.

Someone should do a book, or thick booklet at least, of the collected cracks by Mark Twain, sprung from his lifelong lack of admiration — to put it mildly — for the French.

I cannot find this sentence again but shall do my damnedest to get it as right as possible for you. The sentence includes a reference to “that mixture in his voice of awe and reverence and lust which burns in a Frenchman’s eye when it falls on another man’s centime.”

A lesser writer might have had it, “another man’s coin” or “another man’s money”: but the rhythm would be off. And the finesse would be gone.

*****

Comedians are sometimes resentful of their writers. Probably because it’s hard for giant egos to admit you need anyone but yourself to be what you are. Some of the funniest insults I’ve heard were whispered from one comedy writer to another while in a meeting with an unpleasant star comic, shortsighted enough to be nasty to his writers.

Here come two gems from my small but cherished collection of well-deserved toxic bombs dropped on giant comic egos by fed-up writers.

The comic who received the following poisoned arrow was known on both TV and radio, nationwide. Let’s leave his largely forgotten name aside, should he have surviving relatives who may not have heard this. (Note: It was not Arthur Godfrey. I liked him.)

Let’s call this fellow “Don.”

I met him but twice. He was unpleasant. He was known as a good ad-libber, cordial and amiable on air. Additionally, he was known as a horror. Think of one you know. Don was worse — snide, insulting and contemptuous of those vital employees whose talents nourished and enhanced his reputation as a funny man.

At a meeting with his staff of four writers, his contempt for them and their art became too much for one guy. Don was a marked man, about to inspire an insult of the deadliest variety.

First, a required fact. The comic had an unfortunate disfigurement of the face and was self-conscious about it. Make-up made him look o.k. on the air, but in person, the small craters in the facial flesh were the worst I’ve ever seen. They were virtually holes.

On the fateful day, he said something so infuriating that one of the writers resigned on the spot. Uttering a decidedly unwitty expletive, he jumped to his feet with a loud, “That’s it!” And stomped out, slamming the door.

You’d think that insecure comics — and this category includes some huge stars — would know better than to open themselves up as targets to the very people who can both make them appear witty but can, at the same time, most memorably wound them.

I was a huge Jackie Gleason fan, despite friends who wondered how I could admire both Groucho Marx and Gleason, whom they considered crude. Watch him in “The Honeymooners” or, if you prefer, in “The Hustler” and see the definition of the phrase “never makes a false move.”

Contributing to his collection of neuroses was the fact that, when he was quite young, his father went away one day and never came back. It’s said that Jackie went to great lengths to find his lost father, even trying psychics and trance mediums.

One of Jackie’s writers had been summoned to the penthouse offices of the Gleason show in the Park Sheraton in Manhattan. (In my youth I used to hang around there, in hopes of glimpsing The Great One.) From experience, the guy knew he could expect a chewing out.

The writer was on time but the star was not. An hour passed. And then, another.

The writer, presumably with an already ample list of grievances over this sort of treatment, apparently decided that employment in a salt mine would be no less pleasant than the current gig. He’d had it. It was time to quit.

He announced this to Gleason’s secretary and headed for the door.

“What shall I tell Mr. Gleason when he finds no one here?”

The writer vented his accumulated bile with but a few words:

“Tell him his dad dropped by.”

*****

The comedy writer, and my friend, David Lloyd and I worked on the staff of a popular TV show. There were four writers, one a particularly loathsome specimen. The modesty of his talent may have nourished his other traits: jealousy, gossip, rumor-mongering and an inclination to knife his colleagues whenever he was alone with the star.

I’ve forgotten exactly how he went over the line with David, but I came around a corner just in time to hear, “Al, your parents owe the world a retraction.”

*****

As a sort of sweetener from the brutality of the above blow-gun darts aimed at fellow human beings, let us close this subject — but only for now — with something a bit milder. It’s from the man who once complained to me, “I can’t insult anyone anymore.”

Mistakenly, I thought Groucho was being contrite. But no. It was that things he said when seriously angry, and meaning to wound and leave a scar, failed to injure. Instead, he got the reaction, “Oh, thank you, Groucho! Wait till I tell my friends what Groucho Marx said to me.”

“It’s almost ruined my life,” Mr. Marx only partially jested.

Upon leaving a stuffy Beverly Hills party thrown by a socialite, Groucho said to her, “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”

Humor that wounds, as in your last example, is not humor, it’s an insult, no matter how phony the circumstances. Rim shots sound no more for jokes like that. Even if entirely appropriate for the hostess in question.

I enjoy your commentary, and will continue to. But times have passed you by. No matter though, it’s what will happen to all of us.

I can’t believe my luck. I’ve complained about the lack of a predictable posting schedule because it keeps me coming back at random times to check for another highly anticipated essay. Now I may have the privilege of being the second person to comment — and even before I’ve read the thing.
Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay, he chortled in his joy.

Good stuff. I love a good insult, especially if it’s not overtly mean-spirited. As you explained, it’s all in the timing and inflection…it must be without any embellishment. I’m married to a very bright but very literal person who never gets my oh-so clever retorts and witty comebacks. I tried Henny Youngman’s greatest one-liner (“Take my wife…please!”) on her only to get a late blank “what?”. Success in life is becoming one’s own best audience.

The best Churchill insult stems from his time in the political wilderness. George Bernard Shaw sent him tickets to the first night of his new play with the words: “Bring a friend, if you have one.” WSC sent back his compliments to Mr. Shaw, apologized for his inability to attend the opening night, but said that he would be very pleased to attend the second night “if there is one.”

Sorry, but the best Churchill quote (or at least widely attributed to him) was, again, with a woman in Parliament.

She: Mr. Churchill, if I were your wife I’d poison your tea.

Churchill: Madam, if I were your husband I would drink it.

It doesn’t get much better than that and is my all time favorite.

Second was an inscription on the bathroom stall in the ROTC Department at Troy State University (now just Troy) in Alabama.

Someone had written “I ‘had intercourse’ with your mother” and underneath someone else had penned

“Go home Dad, you’re drunk.”

The last of my top three: playing flag football in law school and the other team hadn’t thrown to our side of the field all game. A friend on that side with me says. “Maybe if we look more like ‘pansies’ they’ll throw to this side.”

i told one female that i would get into the line of politics “only by my own decision”. Furthermore, i told her that she’s not able to alter my determination. In fact, nobody could do it better than what she had been tried.

Is that an insult? let alone the trivially puny “wise”-or-“unwise” question.

A rare misfire for Cavett. The insults offered to “Don” and Gleason are not witty or “great,” they are simply ugly, cruel, and take advantage of deeply felt wounds that were inflicted randomly and without cause. Telling someone his face is *really* pockmarked is not witty, nor is it really an insult. Contrast this with Churchill’s comments. It’s not interesting to respond to someone’s (accurate) accusation that you’re drunk by making the juvenile claim that she is ugly. What turns this exchange witty is his jujitsu when she escalates and he admits that she was right to begin with, thus empowering her, and asserts a power over his condition that she does not have over hers. This movement, or as Cavett identifies it with truly witty insults, this rhythm, is what makes the exchange enjoyable. (In addition, his claim is neither based in fact nor on a well-established wound the MP has regarding her appearance.) It seems to me that a truly great insult cannot be wounding, simply because that raises the possibility that one feels sorry for the insulted. A great insult hits the spot, but its style makes the claim less important than the manner of its making, relieving everyone of any responsibility for the target’s feelings. It might be contestable that the party Groucho was attending was a bore, but his remark about it is a winner.

Dick, I’ve been a big fan of yours, and love your work in all media. The Sinatra line you attributed to Clive James was actually made by Clement Freud on your show, on his first visit to the US. His grandfather was the great Sigmund Freud, and he was a huge name in British television, famed for his dry wit and totally straight face. You introduced him by saying “I understand you have just been in the Greek islands for three months, finishing a novel”. Clement replied: “yes, I’m a very slow reader”. I had been a fan of his when I did obstetrics in the UK during my summers off from medical school in Toronto. He came on the air right after the US moon landing in 1969, and his deadpan delivery was very commanding: “we interrupt this program to bring you some bad news, and some good news. First the bad news: The Red Chinese have landed on the Moon. Now the good news: All of them.”
It doesn’t get any better than that!
Great article, please keep them coming. Peter
ps I have a web site at http://www.peterhansonmd.com. I have done a lot of writing, with my book “The Joy of Stress”, and have always admired your cool charisma during interviews. I’d love to send you a copy if you tell me how.
Peter

If you could only provide these little rays of literary sunshine every week or so. The dry spells in the middle are getting too long. As always, this was dead on the mark. Every time I read your latest, I remember why I loved the one before. Many thanks and keep them coming!

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The host of “The Dick Cavett Show” — which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982 — Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets.” The co-author of “Cavett” (1974) and “Eye on Cavett” (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in “Otherwise Engaged,” “Into the Woods” and as narrator in “The Rocky Horror Show,” and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including “Forrest Gump” and “The Simpsons.” Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.